Sunday, July 22, 2007

Darian and I went to the first free Ozzfest in San Bernardino, CA yesterday. 15 bands played and we caught 8 of them. Although I didn't enjoy the music as much as some of the other shows I've recently seen I must commend Ozzy and Sharon for making this a free event.

Second StageDaath - First band of the day we saw. They were playing the second stage and the crowd seemed to be into them.

3 Inches Of Blood - Next up, and until the 2nd stage headliners they had the greatest demand of the crowd.

Mondo Generator (featuring Nick Oliveri) - I was expecting more from these guys, but I've always expected more from Nick's other band Queens Of The Stone Age. Crowd seemed to mellow during their set.

Behemoth - European metal with guys decked out in makeup. Intense set, their drummer could play double bass like I've never seen.

Hatebreed - Crowd went absolutely crazy. Multiple pits in front of the stage which resulted in this huge dust cloud over the crowd. We were by the mixing board and could barely see the band because of all of the dust.

At this point D and I headed over to the merch booth to get her a Hatebreed shirt. In the merch area we ran into a couple of her friends a friend that works at Hot Topic in Santa Monica and another friend from her school. We hang out with them for about 20-30 minutes, saw a couple of fights, saw a guy get arrested and quite a bit of blood. Its unfortunate that crowds like this get out of hand. To think 50K plus people at Rocklahoma I didn't see one fight and there were no reports of any arrests. Not the case at Ozzfest.

Towards the end of the Hatebreed set we headed over to the main stage to find our seats.

First up on the Main Stage was Lordi.

Main StageLordi - Pyro galore. This is one of the bands I wanted to see, more for the spectacle. They definitely delivered.

Lordi - Set ListIntro - SCG3 Special ReportBringing Back The Balls To RockThe Kids Who Wanna Play With The DeadWho's Your DaddyBlood Red SandmanThe Deadite Girls Gone WildDevil Is A LoserThey Only Come Out At NightWould You Love A MonstermanHard Rock Hallelujah

Static-X - They earned the best performance of the day. For their song Cannibal John 5 came out, decked out in makeup and played lead guitar for the song. Outside of Ozzy I enjoyed their set the best out of the day.

Lamb Of God - I have heard good things about this band but due to very poor sound during the set I didn't get to enjoy it. Crowd loved it and they did play Laid To Rest, the one song of their's I knew. From where I was sitting Redneck was the biggest crowd pleaser.

Ozzy Osbourne - What can you say about Ozzy, he is the reason Ozzfest exists and if royalty existed in metal he would be at the top. This was my second Ozzfest, the first being 10 years ago in 1997. This was the one tour Zakk didn't play with Ozzy so it had been 16 years since I had seen Zakk. This was a great set. Ozzy's newest lineup grooves much better than the lineup with Rob Trujillo, who went to Metallica. Blasko - BassAdam Wakeman - Keyboards (Rick Wakeman's son - Rick is in Yes)Zakk Wylde - GuitarMike Bordin - DrumsOzzy

Ozzy closed the show saying tickets will cost twice as much next year.

Ozzy made the event worthwhile. I'm not into the new, underground heavier metal out today so I don't see myself getting into the majority of the bands we saw. The only band I might check out would be Static-X.

After the high point of the night with Ozzy we then had to deal with the hell of the venue. It took 2 hours, no exaggeration, to get out of the parking lot. Show let out at 11pm and we get home at 2am.